The present invention relates to a rubber stamp, and more particularly to an ornamental rubber stamp of the type used by hobbyists for decorative purposes.
A typical rubber stamp has a holder with a flat base. A cushion of a material such as foam rubber is adhesively attached to the base of the holder, and a resilient mat with a raised design is adhesively attached to the cushion. The resilient mat is typically made of an elastomer material, and rubber may be used for this purpose. However, the term "rubber stamp" as used in the present document does not imply that rubber must necessarily be present in the resilient mat. The top side of the holder may be provided with a handle, or the holder itself may be manually grasped by the person holding the rubber stamp.
The raised design on the resilient mat may have a utilitarian purpose. For example, the raised design may include alphanumeric characters for a return address or the message "paid" or "first class mail." Alternatively, the raised design may have a decorative purpose. For example it may depict an individual visual element such as a flower or a bird, or it may depict a scene which includes a combination of visual elements.
Decorative rubber stamps are becoming increasingly popular among hobbyists. Using an assortment of rubber stamps, a hobbyist can create a personalized scene on a greeting card, for example. Ink pads are available in a variety of colors for use by hobbyists. The hobbyist selects a stamp and an ink pad of the desired color, presses the rubber stamp against the ink pad to transfer ink to the raised design, and then presses the rubber stamp against the greeting card to transfer an image corresponding to the raised design to the greeting card. Using this technique, the image created during a single stamping operation has a single color. Ink pads which carry inks of different colors in different regions of the pad (so-called "rainbow" pads) are commercially available in order to permit a multi-colored image to be created during a single stamping operation. While the resulting images are not as bland as single-colored images, the color pattern received from the pad generally has nothing to do with the image itself.
In order to use a rubber stamp to create an image with colors that conform to the image, it is common for hobbyists to abandon ink pads altogether and turn instead to felt-tip markers. The hobbyist uses the markers to transfer ink to different portions of the raised design of a stamp, and then presses the raised design against a greeting card or other record carrier. For example, a hobbyist might use a green marker to color the leaves and stem of a flower and a red marker to color the flower itself. A red flower with a green stem and leaves could then be stamped onto a greeting card or other surface.
The problem with this technique for creating multi-colored images is that it is a time-consuming and exacting task to use felt-tip markers to color individual portions of the raised design of a rubber stamp.